Thoughts on moving

My stay at N1 is coming to an end.  Packers and movers will move my household tomorrow.  I plan to leave the day after, spend an evening with a very dear friend and colleague and fly out to New1-city after that.

Planning and coordinating the move has been very smooth this time.  After a couple more signatures on my no dues form, I will be good to go!

I was going through some of the initial posts on this blog about my excitement at joining N1.  I have spent a little more than two years here and have learnt a lot. At the time of joining, I did not anticipate that I will move.  I imagined that I will live "happily ever after" at N1, but now realize that one cannot predict the future in such certain terms.  My experience here has been mostly very positive.  I feel privileged for getting a chance to teach motivated and sincere students,  work with talented and energetic colleagues and serve the institute.

I hope that my experience at N1 can enable me to do a much better job at New1.  The three most crucial lessons I have learnt during my stay here are

1) the importance of time management  to balance both research and teaching activities

2) to serve the institute wholeheartedly, but not to take any unpleasant interaction with colleagues personally

3) to always remember that while an institute needs the employee, the employee needs the institute more [this is something I learnt from my colleague, Prince Calming]

But, I have to admit - I have developed a serious aversion to attending meetings!  See the contrast in what I felt about attending meetings here (last year) and here (this year). [1]

Recently, when I was talking to a relative [who thinks I am too starry eyed for my own good] about the upcoming move, he remarked, "It's nice to see you excited to move to New1. But, weren't you as excited two years ago when you were moving to N1?"

Yes, I was, and I don't see why I should not be so all over again.  

I am now moving to a place where I will be a much better fit.  There are many reasons to be happy about - the presence of an active group in my research area, the efforts made by the leadership to encourage and facilitate the growth of my future department and of course, the interest they have shown in my application.  It is always great to join a place where one feels welcomed and an integral part of the system. 






[1] During my interview at New1, members of the selection team remarked about the high number of committees that I was a member of at N1 (this was mentioned in my CV).  When one of them mentioned that I might find myself without a lot of these jobs on joining New1, I wanted to stand up and dance in joy. 
 

Conflict of (non) interest?

Tomorrow, there is going to be a meeting about a very important issue which involves our department.  Thus, the department needs a representative to be present to clearly convey the departmental requirements/point of view and ensure that these are understood and taken into account.  Due to logistical reasons, the meeting is scheduled during a weekend.  As almost all my colleagues are on leave, I have to be present in the meeting.

Members of my department have had serious discussions about this matter and we have a proper plan of action.  So, technically speaking, I am prepared for this meeting.  As a responsible member of the department, I will do my best to convey the above requirements.  But, I am a little concerned that tomorrow's meeting might come to a final decision about this matter.  This is because I personally will not be affected by the outcome [I am leaving N1 in less than a week].  Members of my department, who will be affected by the outcome, may later feel unhappy with the decision.  Some may also feel that I did not push our department's interests strongly enough because I do not have long-term stakes in the matter.

It did not help at all when both my father and guest writer, on hearing about this meeting, advised me to take it easy and not get involved. "Just keep quiet during the meeting and don't react to anything," my father said.

I just called a colleague and requested him to go for this meeting instead, explaining my concerns.  Due to some urgent personal issues, he can't do so.  We once again went over the main points that need to be presented tomorrow.   He suggested that if there is any confusion, I can call him up to clarify.

It is possible that no final decisions will be taken tomorrow and this meeting is to just set the ball rolling, so to speak.  Apart from representing the department, I also need to communicate the outcome of the meeting to my colleagues so that there is no misinformation or gap in communication later.

This will be my last meeting at N1.  I just wish it weren't so important [1].





[1] On a totally unrelated note, it is not clear to me if one should say "I just wish it wasn't so important".  So, I googled and came across websites which talked about indicative mood vs subjunctive mood, formal vs informal, but am still confused.  Any help, blogosphere? 

Moving prep - I

While many preliminary arrangements for the upcoming move had been made long ago, the main steps began today.

1) I took out the no dues form that has to be signed by a lot of functionaries.  One of the deans has signed and so has the computer center coordinator.  I hold some duties at N1, which require me to sign this form for people who leave.  There has been no announcement about who will replace me in these duties.  So, I might end up signing my own no dues form!

2) My PhD student is waiting for his release order.  There has been some confusion about his release date because as per CSIR rules, when a JRF transfers his/her fellowship, the date of joining the new place must not be more than a day after leaving the old place.  But, the train journey between these places takes more than a day.  The confusion was sorted out today.  I am very happy to see my student's excitement to move!

3) Grades for the three courses I taught this term will be submitted tomorrow.  In the online teaching plan for N1 next semester, I have been indicated as a course instructor.  Huh?

4) I transferred my gas connection to New1-city today.  This was much smoother than getting the gas connection two years ago.  I had planned to deposit a friend's empty cylinder and use mine till the day of move.  But, it did not work out because the regulator had to be deposited as well.  So, I am now without cooking facilities and have to get food from the campus canteen.  Good thing I gave up the morning tea/coffee habit long ago and replaced it with milk.  Wait, how do I boil the milk?

Guest post: Third and final instalment (A walk in the academic garden)

Our guest writer has accepted X's offer.  They have agreed to defer his position so that he can take up his dream postdoc before joining.  He can now officially dream of returning to India.  Here's his third and final post (though I sure hope he will write more at a later time):

In a happy frame of mind, chatting as usual on a google voice call, I was scrolling up and down the department webpage when I realized that my lax teaching schedule that semester meant I had four days off in an upcoming week. Added to the weekend, that's six days off work. I mentioned this to her and she replied, in the sweetest possible voice: Why don't you come over then? In matters of the heart, you don't turn down a request like that. I got someone to cover one lecture and soon enough, I was on a flight back to India to spend a few days with my special someone. We will call her J.

Apart from a loving fiance, J has a job at an academic institute in India (which reminds me a lot of my undergraduate institute).  For the next few days, we explored her academic garden together. There were at least three reasons for this. First, we wanted to spend as much time together as possible. Secondly, I was anxious to see Indian academia up close now that I was about to join it myself. And finally, I wanted to be showered with more niceties, such as the security guard who stood up to attention when he saw us.

J's place was a delight. It reminded me of my childhood days, when I wouldn't mind playing in the hot summer sun for hours and then rushing in to drink Rooh-afza straight out of the refrigerator.  The food was absolutely great and J made sure it was cooked to my taste. Above all, I got to watch live the Hindi serials I had been craving for a long time. Being a junkie for food, romance and TV, this was one vacation I would never forget. And finally, there was the small talk with the people who work around her house. In India, small talk quickly leads people to tell each other everything about their families and daily lives. The easy familiarity with which Indians treat each other is very refreshing. I would say its one of the charms of our country.

As I immersed myself in the Indian academic culture after several years, memories of my undergrad days came flooding back. Except, this time I didn't have to be a powerless student any more. In fact, J appeared to be surrounded by students eager to please her and they felt obliged to extend the same courtesies to me. I must  say the attention has some definite charm and while I resist being called "Sir", I believe I can totally get used to that.

The best part was that we could take off, now and then, to the tea shop where the soul of the campus resides. It was always easy to find people who were willing to go there with us. And once there, we would meet a steady stream of her colleagues. She would introduce me with a smile and I would give each person the same smile and say: "She always tells me such nice things about you". For me, it was like meeting the cast of my favorite daily soap. There was something about the place that made people drop their guard and speak freely. Gossip was easy to come by and was never lacking in entertainment value. As I poured ketchup liberally over my omelette toast, I asked J how she would feel about me opening another such shop outside her institute. Not only would this solve our two body problem, but I think it could even be a more fun job. Again, I was only half-kidding. However, J said a vehement no. She insisted that if I did so, I would be throwing the two-body out with the two-body problem.  I don't think she was kidding about that.

Guest Post: Second instalment

I couldn't say I wasn't flattered. I had received an email from Institute X
in India inviting me to apply for a faculty position. Not only was Institute
X prestigious, but I also had an old connection to them from the days
of high school. There were two caveats though, first my heart was set
on taking this short term dream position at a dream place which would
delay my return by at least a year. The second was, if you don't mind
taking me seriously, the fact that I did not know the local language at
the place where X was located. Not that I wasn't eager to learn, but this
meant it would be difficult for me to lead that nation changing political
movement I always planned to lead :) I am only half-kidding.

I wrote about my first caveat to institute X and they assured me they
would be flexible. So, that was that. Secondly, certain political events
in India had started unfolding around the same time that assured me
my services would not be required immediately. It was time to apply.
However, knowing that life has a way of playing practical jokes on me,
I decided to make another application to Institute Y. Institute Y was very new
and located in a "mera gaon mera desh"  type place where I knew I would
be very happy.

Both institutes X and Y wanted to put me through 2 rounds of interviews.
For X, the first  round would happen on Skype, but for the second
round, I would have to fly to India. Being new, Y was ready to do both
rounds on Skype. In the course of these events, I realized how easy
it is to interview on Skype. There is no pressure to make eye contact
and if you trip up and need a moment to craft a response, you can always
blame a flaky internet connection to buy some time.

But for round 2 at Institute X, I had to fly to India. By carefully studying
breaks in my teaching schedule and their proximity to the weekend,
I devised a plan that would allow me to interview in India by missing just
1 day of teaching. The catch was, of course, that I would have to fly
halfway across the globe, spend less than 24 hours in India and fly
right back. But as a veteran Greyhound traveler and airport floor sleeper,
I was ready for it. The lady at the airport check in thought I was crazy
to fly to India with no checked luggage, but the whole experience was
remarkably easy and untiring. I was introduced to everyone in the
department, I made my buzzword laden presentation, the audience clapped
dutifully, I had a sumptuous dinner and I was on my way back.

On my way back, I was in such a good mood, I would have been whistling
if I knew exactly how to (I have never really perfected the "seeti"...what
can I say...I am a gentleman :P). Since I was changing planes in one of those
insanely, obscenely rich countries in the Middle East, security for my US
bound flight seemed more paranoid than usual, but it was ok.  On the last
leg of my journey, I even decided to strike up a conversation with my
fellow passengers. I started with the jovial looking person to my left. To my
dismay, he seemed grumpy (why does this always happen to me?).
Time to try again, this time the dude to my right with the thin mustache was an Indian...IT professional...and with a fake accent! Bingo!  I treated him to a fake
French accent for a while to throw him off his game (seriously, try it... it's
way cooler than the fake American accent)  but it was good fun all the way.
Life does get better :)

Guest post: The job search story of a soon-to-be new prof - I

A friend and regular reader of this blog, who will soon be starting a faculty position in India, has graciously agreed to write a few guest posts about his job search.  Here comes the first instalment : 

She repeated her question 3 times and each time I shook my head miserably.

"What?"... I kept asking in return. It seemed like yesterday that I stood before 

the American visa officer, straining to understand her accent.  She gave up 

soon after, but stamped my passport nevertheless. A month later, I stepped 

off the plane bravely into the land of the free. 

Like cars rolling off an assembly line, I am the standard Indian geek. Driven

by hormones and ego, I went through the four years of madness in high school, 

on to prestigious Indian institute and finally to middling American university for

my PhD. I had a desk of my own, an adviser and even some undergraduate

minions to lord over as a TA. All that remained was to get down to the business

of making stunning discoveries.

This last one turned out to be harder than I thought. I learned to recalibrate

my expectations and soon enough, life was good again. It was about this

time that I discovered my travel bug and also that I had a thing for schmoozing.

I had found myself the perfect profession to combine the two. My first time

in Europe was a dream; the continent beckoned with its shady roads, its

lazy lunches and exotic languages. I worked hard on perfecting the art of taking 

myself seriously. I cultivated fake hobbies such as a taste for fine wines and

even classical music... Western classical of course!

It was time to get older and wiser. Soon enough, they printed out a degree

for me and I was handed a postdoc with one of my adviser's collaborators.

With a little more cash in my pocket, I was beginning to appreciate America

more. And while I definitely appreciated the meaty pizzas and the free 

customer service, I was beginning to connect with America on a deeper level:

freedom.

Freedom: this was what I craved all along when I instinctively rejected all the

opinions of pushy parents and bossy teachers. I wanted to live it. Of course,

this is anything but easy when trying to build a publication record and 

faced with the tyranny of referees. But, I learned to keep my chin up. Once

again, not taking myself too seriously helped. 

I will stick my neck out and say here that everyone who goes abroad (except

in some extreme cases, perhaps) dreams of returning at some point. Like

so many other dreams... winning a Nobel prize, becoming a billionaire

or dating a supermodel, often these dreams don't come true. But for Indians

of my generation, who saw Saurav Ganguly waving his shirt around in the

balcony at Lord's as a signal to arms, the dream was easier to attain. India

was open for business and the possibilities seemed endless. I decided

to pick up my suitcase and jetset my way back home. But, older and

wiser that I was, I made a few prior arrangements. If Newprof so desires, you

folks will hear about it in another post :)

The "drive" to move

My resignation from N1 was approved last week.  I will be moving in December after finishing my semester responsibilities here.  So, from time to time, I will write about preparations for the upcoming move.

This week, I was back home for a few days to celebrate the festive season.  I met some friends and relatives, who are happy about the upcoming move to New1 city and have generously offered congratulatory best wishes and lots of well meant advice.  Most of what they say now is exactly what they said two years ago when I was moving to N1.  For example,

"You will enjoy the intellectual/cultural atmosphere at N1 city," 

"we will certainly visit you there," 

"the traffic is bad," 

"you should buy a car and learn driving"

and, of course, the classic

"We know so and so over there.  Here is their phone number.  You must get in touch with them.  They are verrrrrrry nice people."

None of the above, except the bad traffic, came to pass.  I never really got a chance to enjoy the cultural atmosphere of N1 city, my relatives never visited me, I did not buy a car and I certainly never bothered to contact the people whose phone numbers were given to me.  Not that I missed any of the above, but I do find it amusing that the above comments are being repeated verbatim!

But, one advice that I am taking very seriously this time is that of buying a car and learning to drive.

Ideally, I would love to just keep a bicycle and not have to worry about car maintenance, heavy traffic , parking etc.  I managed fairly well with a bicycle at my postdoc locations and at N1, but this does not seem feasible at New1 city.

Strictly speaking, one could manage without a car there, but having one does present many advantages.  For example, if needed, I can stay in the department till late to finish any important work without having to worry about safety issues and keeping a car does provide an extra degree of freedom for shopping, traveling etc.

I learnt driving as soon as I turned 18 and was very fond of it.  But, I lost touch after I went to North America.  This week, my father has been giving me lessons every morning.  It seems that just like cycling and swimming, one does not really forget driving.  However, my main challenge has been to overcome the initial hesitation.
As an 18 year old, I was indestructible - no amount of traffic and no fear of damaging my (father's) car bothered me.   But, I am paranoid right now [1].  The roads are practically empty in the morning, but it took me two days to even try driving at 3rd gear or above.  Also, I will need some serious practice before I can be confident about parking [in fact, I find parking much harder than driving properly].

My plan is to take some driving lessons again after I move to New1 city, even though my father feels it is not necessary.  Some of my colleagues  at New1 have suggested some reliable teachers.

The next question is to decide which model.  I am thinking of a Hyundai i10 sportz.
i10 seems to be a favourite with most of my colleagues and this model has an added advantage of automatic gears [2].  But, some of my friends think that once I overcome my initial fears and get more driving practice, I might not care so much for automatic gears.  So, I am still giving this more thought.

But, each time, I start to think about cars and driving, my first inclination is to think of reasons not to buy a car and strategies to manage comfortably without one.   Sadly, this time, I have no option but to overcome this fear!


Comments/tips/driving stories are most welcome!




[1] To begin with, this time, I am practicing on my brother's car, and not my father's good old Maruti 800.  That itself is a scary proposition!

[2] The other day, my sister-in-law joked that I need not fear driving as driving a car with automatic gears is as easy as driving a toy car at Appu Ghar.  

Clothes maketh the prof?

At first, I thought that this blog post might be a bit shallow, but realized that on the contrary, it is related to a topic that has been written about a lot in the academic blogosphere.  FSP has a series of posts related to academic dressing tagged under the label "What to wear".

It is a topic on which my father and I have a lot of argument.  My father is a retired army officer with a very sophisticated approach to dressing up.  He is almost always dressed up formally, for example, here's him making tea: (pardon the crease on his coat- he had just arrived at N1 after a long flight and a jittery road journey!)[1]

He has a lot of trouble accepting the casual and extremely informal manner in which academics dress (especially those in my STEM field!)

I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite.  I don't particularly try to dress formally and am fairly comfortable in a "casual dress" atmosphere. 

During one of my job talks two years ago, my father graciously agreed to give me a ride to the institute.  I thought it would also be good for him to experience the atmosphere at a research institute.  However, as we set out to leave, he was "very concerned" to see me dress up in jeans.  Despite his repeated remonstrances, I refused to change.  He was not too pleased, but relaxed a little after arriving at the institute and realizing that he was the only formally dressed up person in the whole building.

My father strongly believes that one must dress appropriately for all occasions and cannot imagine how a professor can teach wearing shorts/jeans and T-shirts and still earn the respect of his/her students [2].  I have tried hard to convince him that most students don't care about how their profs dress and are more concerned about how and what they teach, but to no avail.

Recently, Doordarshan aired a small documentary on N1.  I informed him about the timing and he sat down to watch it very eagerly.  Though it is not the best documentary ever made, I personally enjoyed watching my favourite colleagues talking about the academic programmes at N1, their research equipments and labs, performance of students, N1's place in the scientific landscape of India etc.  My father likes to read and talk about science and I expected that he might ask me more questions about these things when we talked later.

Later that evening, when I asked my father how he found the documentary, he said that although he found it very informative, he felt that it would have had a "higher impact" if the people shown in the documentary had dressed better.  I argued with him once again and said that the documentary served its purpose by showcasing honestly what a typically normal day at N1 is like.  Faculty members dressing up formally for one day just to shoot a documentary would have been superficial and unreal.   But, he emphasised that dressing up and presenting oneself appropriately for a programme shown on National TV was very important.  I tried very hard, but failed to convince him that "appropriate dressing" has different connotations in a military cantonment and an academic establishment.

Finally, to change the topic, he asked me why I was not in the documentary.  I am very glad that I was not in the documentary.  On the day it was being shot, I was very "inappropriately" dressed.  I am not sure how he would have reacted to see his daughter on National TV wearing a black T-shirt and blue capris!





[1] The reason he is in the kitchen making tea and not me is because he is also very particular about how he likes his evening tea.  
[2] I once introduced him to a colleague who was heading towards the institute one morning.  My father later asked me if this person was the PT instructor!

On strong PhD programmes

A few days ago, in response to this post, a commenter wondered if Indian institutes, including the new ones, are turning into factories to train students to go abroad.  I don't have the general statistics about students staying back in India vis-a-vis students going abroad.  But, from what I observe at N1, a good chunk of our faculty members have studied at institutes like IISc or other older institutes.  So, these institutes have not just trained people who leave the country, but have also trained a sufficient number of people who are doing excellent work at new institutes and are building them up.

But, to come back to the commenter's specific concern, can the new institutes do more to create a research environment that can motivate more students to stay back?  Well, for starters, we can have well designed and competitive PhD programmes which will inspire, attract and motivate interested students.

Scientists and educators  with more experience and accomplishments can of course offer much more carefully thought out views about this matter.  But, two recent incidents have motivated me to write and share some thoughts about it (for whatever they are worth).  I apologize in advance for my scattered thoughts and some "wild speculation" that follows.

Firstly, I have been spending a lot of time with a student in our Post BSc Integrated PhD (PBIP) programme.  In this programme, students finish course work (equivalent to MSc) in the first two years.  In addition, in their second year, they choose an area of interest in which they do a year-long project.  At the end of the second year, they take a comprehensive exam, and if successful, start working towards their PhD in the third year.  The primary advantage of this format is that in the first two years, we can give a rigorous training to students as per the standards and requirements of our PhD programme.  This gives them a stronger foundation to start their PhD at the beginning of the third year with a supervisor.  But, at the end of the second year, students also have the option of leaving with an MSc.

This student is doing her Master's project with me.  As I am leaving next term, we are trying to finish most of her project work while I am still here and she has easier access to me.  This student is very eager, motivated and hard working.  She is, in essence, the first student of our PBIP programme [1].  Her performance, so far, has been brilliant.  So, members of my department have been mulling a lot about how our PBIP programme can be strengthened so that students like her can get the most out of it and retain their motivation.  Moreover, how can we ensure that students like her stay back with us for a PhD and not move at the end of the second year?

Rephrase: How can we attract talented students like her to stay back with us?  [2]

Secondly, there has been some discussion at N1 recently about the underlying objective of the institute.  While some members of our institute primarily think of it as an undergraduate teaching institution and wish to mould it accordingly (with a vision of faculty members doing research in addition to their primary undergraduate teaching responsibilities), some other members see our institute as a research institution, which, equally importantly, teaches and trains students at all levels (undergraduate as well as post graduate) to do science [3].

Members of the latter group feel that to accomplish this vision, our PBIP programme, as well as our PhD programme, should be given  as much importance as the Integrated BS-MS programme.  In fact, it is felt that the PBIP programme should be considered as much a flagship programme of the N-type institutes as the BS-MS programme.

The programme, as it currently stands, may come across as a mere sidekick to the nationally recognized BS-MS programme.  For example, I am not sure about other N institutes, but at N1, we do not have separate courses for the PBIP programme.
Instead, we ask PBIP students to take courses in the higher levels of the BS-MS programme.  This is mainly because of (hopefully short-term) logistical issues, like non-availability of enough faculty to teach so many courses.  Thus, instead of designing courses specifically for the requirements of these students, we only adjust them into our existing courses, which were designed for a different programme.  This may not necessarily inspire the confidence of the students who pursue PBIP or train them in the best possible way [4].

Recognizing PBIP as a flagship programme will lead to proper planning of the course structure in keeping with its aims and very importantly, hiring of enough faculty  to keep the programme running independently.

Another very interesting idea that is being discussed among some faculty members is the possibility of a common national-level entrance procedure into PBIP for all the N-institutes akin to that of the BS-MS programme.  This might enable these institutes to publicize this programme more widely and tap into a bigger pool of talented and interested students.

Given the energy levels and the flowering research programmes of many faculty members at the N institutes, the PBIP programmes at these institutes certainly have a very bright future.

I hope to blog more about this issue as I understand it better.  Inputs/comments from readers will be highly appreciated.

I know that some of the readers of this blog are PBIP students at N-type institutes.
It would be great to hear back from them about their experience with this programme.



[1] Another student had been chosen in the batch before her.  But, he left the programme because he found the course work daunting.
[2] Somehow, "ensure" seems to have a very sinister and coercive implication.  A couple of years ago, a proposal was floated that we levy some kind of fee on students who want to leave with an MSc, but this was immediately shot down by the academic committees overlooking this issue.
[3] Whether these ways of thinking are fundamentally different or fundamentally the same could possibly form the subject of a future blog post!
[4] In my STEM field, this leads to some additional complications.  While, technically speaking, first year PBIP students are equivalent to fourth year MS students, most undergrad programmes in India do not cover the material that we cover in the third year of our BS-MS programme.

Strictly confidential

A few days ago, I unwillingly became a subject of some gossip at N1.  This was around the time I was applying for a position at New1.  Like everyone in my situation, I wanted to keep it very confidential.   I wanted to tell my colleagues only after New1 made me an offer (if they did, that is.)

Immediately before submitting the application, I informed the director and two deans for official purposes [1].  The application went through the proper channels and all was well.  One day, however, in a moment of indiscretion, I mentioned it to someone "unofficially" and requested the listener to keep it "strictly confidential".
Little did I know that by doing so, I made the information public immediately.
Moreover, adding the "strictly confidential" clause ensured that there was a very high-speed delivery of this information across the campus.

This had immediate consequences, which would have been hilarious, had it not not been so awkward!  Some of my departmental colleagues walked into my office to tell me that they had heard from the tea shop owner that I was moving!  "We'll miss you, new prof, but we wish you well" they said.

Moving already? Hello, I had not even been interviewed as yet!!

I then walked into the office of a colleague and very dear friend to talk to her about it before she heard it from other sources.

New prof: Hi, there's something you need to hear from me before you hear it from others.

Friend: I know for the last one week!

New prof: What do you know?

Friend: That you are moving.

New prof: NO NO, that's not true. I have applied, that's all.

Friend: (Surprised) Oh, I thought your moving was pretty certain!

After that, we went for a cup of tea and had a frank heart-to-heart conversation (away from the ears of the shop owner!)

The other funny conversation I had was with a person in the admin building.

Admin staff: I am very sorry to hear that you are leaving.

New prof: I am not leaving.  It is not certain.

Admin staff: I am worried about who will become the next warden of the girls hostel.

New prof: Well, there are so many women faculty who live on campus.

Admin staff: Yes,  but you have a very good attitude.

New prof: (keeps quiet, not sure if she should be flattered that people will miss her "good attitude" or angry that people are only worried about appointing the next warden!)

One positive consequence of all of this was that some very concerned and well-meaning colleagues from other departments came to talk to me about it.  They were worried that I was feeling isolated and lonely here and came to assure me that I was not alone!  That felt very nice.  I also got dinner invitations, which was a pleasant surprise, given my non-existent social life here :-)

But, through it all, I was very worried about what would happen if New1 did not make me an offer!  That would place me in such an embarrassing position! In a state of paranoia, I imagined awful scenarios in which people at the tea shop would gossip about how "new prof wants to move, but can't get another job"!  I imagined that the tea shop owner would ask me "Arre didi, aap ab tak yeheen hain?" [Translation: Sister, you are still here?] or even worse, "Ab Kya Karengi, didi?" [Translation: What will you do now, sister?]

Just before I left for my interview at New1, I made the following Plan B in case things did not work out with my application there:

 Motivated by this post by GMP, I ordered the book "A guide to rational living" by Albert Ellis and Robert Harper on Flipkart, a book about Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy, which, as the back cover says, "can teach any intelligent person how to stop feeling miserable about practically anything."

Happily, by the time the book arrived, New1 had already made me an offer and I had accepted.  So, although I am reading the book, it is for reasons very different from the one I originally imagined.

Are there any therapies which teach you how to keep your matters "strictly confidential"? [2]



[1] I also informed my PhD student because this would directly affect his future as well.  I am glad I did so because he went for a conference to another city soon after that and colleagues from this city told him that I might move.  I have no idea how they knew it! But, I am really glad that my student heard it from me before he heard it from them! 

[2] In  case any one is wondering, I am pretty reliable when it comes to preserving information about others!

Are you a student?

I often get mistaken for a student.  Almost always, it leads to hilarious situations.

When I was interviewed at N1, some people asked a colleague who was showing me around if I was her student.  The guest house in charge was very concerned at my being the only person staying in the guest house at that time and told my colleague, "She is very young. She might get scared."

When I joined N1, many people assumed that my father is a new faculty member and I am just following him.  When he accompanied me to some offices, the office assistants passed the forms to him and started explaining to him how to fill them up! (therefore, I have requested him not to accompany me when I join New1, and even when he does visit me there, he will be asked to stay away from the office premises.)

When I was asked to become warden of the girls hostel, some students asked my domestic help (who also works at the institute) about me.  She apparently replied, "Woh toh khud bachchi hai, aur ladkiyon ko kya sambhalegi!" [Translation: She herself is a girl. How will she take care of other girls?]  By the way, it did not take the students, guards and house keeping staff long to figure out that I was not a "bachchi"!

Every once in a while, students come into my office and ask me when Dr NPNI will be back! [1]   Every year, I meet a couple of new students  who start off by calling me "didi."

However,  the frequency of such incidents has decreased, especially since I drastically upgraded my wardrobe.

Recently, another such situation presented itself.  While attending a conference last week, I was having dinner with a senior colleague, when a young PhD student joined us.  The senior colleague introduced us to each other by our names.
Student asked me where I am from and on hearing my answer, asked me what research area I work in.  After that, he continued the conversation with senior colleague.

A couple of days later, this student walked into an office in which I was using a desk reserved for visitors.  I was preparing some lectures for my course.  He had come to talk to a faculty colleague at New1 who sits in that office.  Here's how the conversation went:

Student (to me): Hi! What's up? How come you are here?

New1 Colleague: She is using every spare minute to prepare her course lectures.

Student(to me, looking surprised): Oh, are you faculty? I did not know that.

New1 Colleague: Yes.  She is currently a faculty member at N1 and is joining us next semester.

Student: Cool. I had no idea.

NPNI: (Smiles, and thinks "I thought as much!")

Later, in the course of his conversation with New1 Colleague, I heard this student asking very demanding questions like, "How come this work had not been done before? What was your motivation in working on it?"  I rolled my eyes and thought "Poor kid! He will grow up soon enough!"[2]


Next morning, as I flew back to N1 city with a colleague from another place, I narrated this incident to her and asked if she knew whose student this person was.
My colleague laughed back, "He is not a student.  He is a faculty member at -----Institute!"



[1] One student even asked me, "Are you Dr NPNI's secretary?"  I was almost flattered that he thought I was important enough to have a secretary.
[2] Haven't we all said stupid things to profs when we were students? 

An upcoming move

I am very happy to share with you the news that I have recently been offered and have accepted a position at another "N" institute, and will be moving next semester.
Inspired by a comment left by an anonymous commenter long ago, my future institute will be henceforth referred to as New1[1].  My primary motivation to move to New1 is the tremendous opportunity that it provides for my academic growth.

Working at N1 has been a wonderful experience and I have always been very happy here.  But, I have had to take this difficult decision purely from the point of view of furthering my academic goals.  N1 and New1 share very similar philosophies and objectives and that is an added advantage.

I am feeling a lot of things right now. I feel excited about a new opportunity and I also feel sad at the prospect of moving away from some very close friends and dear colleagues. [This has been my plight since childhood - move from a place as soon as I begin to build personal connections there- sigh!  In the last six months at N1, I have made some really good friends here!]

But, what I feel the most right now is gratitude. I am grateful to New1 for expressing an interest in my application and processing it in a very timely manner, grateful to N1 for understanding my professional needs and granting the necessary approvals [2] very smoothly, grateful to all my referees for sending in their letters at very short notice and for always supporting me in all my endeavours.  My initial plan was to apply a few months later and to more than one place so that I could give my referees sufficient time to write.  However, once my former advisor and second postdoc mentor assured me that they will write for me as soon as needed, I decided to avail this very good opportunity presented by New1.  After this, I contacted two other referees who also promptly sent in their letters.

I am also very grateful for the professional courtesy and the positive vibes that I encountered  during my interaction with the chairperson, members of the selection committee and other faculty members during the visit to New1 for my job talk and interview.

Coincidentally, this week, I am at New1 for a conference.  I have met many future colleagues and they have been very friendly, warm and welcoming, this making me look forward to the move.

Finally, I am so grateful to be in India at a time when there are so many opportunities to build a science career at new places which want you and also the opportunity to contribute towards building these places.






[1] The other possible names could be N2, NN1 etc. But, I like New1 the most.
[2] Applications to move from one government institute in India to another have to go through proper channels.  Thus, I had to take approval from the director at N1 to apply to New1.  I truly appreciate his cooperation in this matter. 

On guest houses

Earlier this week, I visited another institute and stayed at their guest house for a couple of days.  This GH had a very homely atmosphere.  I had one room of a big apartment with shared kitchen and dining facilities.  All the meals were cooked and served fresh by a resident caretaker (who reminded me of the proverbial Bansi kaka from Hindi movies).  It was sheer delight to have hot and puffed chapatis fresh off the pan for dinner (something that I don't enjoy at home also as my cook does the cooking and leaves before I return).  We were served hot Indian meals for breakfast as opposed to toast or cereal with milk.  The caretaker was also kind enough to serve us masala chai before we left in the morning and after we returned in the evening. Had I not been otherwise preoccupied, I might have stepped into the kitchen and taken some cooking lessons from him.

This visit brought back some pleasant memories of my fist visit to N1.

Every year, N1 goes through a rough time accommodating its new batch of students.  However, hosting visitors is not one of our problems.  Our authorities have been very conscious about maintaining a couple of small but decent guest houses so that we can invite and host visiting scientists without any constraints [1].
A very talented person from the hospitality industry was brought in to renovate some old, decrepit houses into functional guest houses.  Two of these guest houses, known as VIP guest houses, host senior and distinguished scientists and also new faculty members who stay there till they find a place of their own.  The only limitation is that these guest houses do not have a fully functional kitchen.  The visitors either eat at the hostel canteens or food is brought from outside and heated in a microwave before it is served.

There is another guest house, which hosts job candidates and faculty members who stay back on campus to teach early morning classes.  I stayed in this guest house during my first visit.  This guest house also did not have its own kitchen, but was located right next to the director's bungalow.  As the director stayed by himself in his bungalow,  he allowed some other rooms in a different part of the bungalow to be used for hosting guests.  The dining area of this house was also made accessible to institute visitors.  Thus it happened that during my four day visit to N1, I ended up having fresh, home-cooked meals prepared by the director's chef along with other visitors [and many a times, the director himself joined us].  

Due to a variety of reasons, this bungalow is not open to visitors any more.  Thus, institute guests are back to having packed meals in their rooms.

I was very impressed that the institute that I was visiting has made such comfortable long-term arrangements for their guests.  It's always nice to feel at home when traveling.

[1] However, earlier this month, it looked like we might have to convert our guest houses into hostels.  Fortunately, we were able to avoid this extreme step.

When students run the show

The last few weeks have seen a wonderful improvement in my relationship with students in the capacity of hostel warden.  I actually don't mind being a warden anymore, even though this year I will be responsible for a hostel with 120 students, both men and women.  I am happy to meet students when they come to my office or when they stop to talk to me in corridors.

This is due to various reasons.  Firstly, the institute now invites student representatives to certain committee meetings which involve their life on campus.
In these meetings, students are encouraged to speak up and share their viewpoint.
But, most importantly, by being part of the discussion, they become aware of the constraints under which the institute is functioning and why their demands cannot be immediately met.  They understand the working of institutional procedures and realize why certain things cannot be done overnight.  As a result of it all,  the warden is not seen as a bad cop any longer (at least, I hope that s/he is not!) [1]

Secondly, I now follow the policy of transparency with students in my hostel.
Whenever any complaint has to be forwarded to different sections, I cc the email to the student representative.  If they come to my office to ask why a certain decision has been taken, I tell them the reason instead of meaningless references to "instructions from the authority."

For example, last week, a section of PhD students, accosted me after a seminar to demand why they are not being alloted single rooms despite repeated promises made to them about it.  "We lose our HRA to live on campus, but are treated like undergraduate students.  Is this fair?"  I was a little annoyed at being questioned in this way.  At the moment, N1 does not offer hostel accommodation to its PhD students because of space constraints [2].  However, we try to provide hostel seats for them if space is left after accommodating our undergraduate students.  As this entails losing their HRA, very few students have opted for it and on this account, they naturally feel upset with the hostel wardens for not providing them single seater rooms.  I took the students to my office and showed them the data about incoming  students.  After that, I showed them our allotment charts and convinced them that single seater rooms are not possible unless we turn some rooms into cramped three-seaters.  As a result, the students understood the reason why we cannot meet their demands and we parted on a friendly note.

The delay in the construction of our permanent hostel complex (for reasons completely beyond our control, as the students now realize) also results in students moving between the available hostels every year (due to changes in numbers of men and women).  As warden, I have had to organize two such moves.  The move last year upset many of the women students because they had to move from a building close to the academic area to a building far away.  There was also some confusion because the security guards insisted on searching their baggage before they left a hostel and the vehicle helping them to move was too small (and in between the move, the driver suddenly went away for lunch, leaving the students stranded for a long time).  I was inundated with angry phone calls all through the day.  The students also had to face many problems in the first few days of their move to the new hostel.  For a long time, many of these students even refused to speak to me!

However, the same students happily cooperated with us in orchestrating another move.  Although the students had been warned about their impending move, due to some logistical reasons, we had to shift the dates a little.  As a result, this move happened while most students were away.  However, the student hostel representative got in touch with them, informed them about the move and explained to them the reason behind the shift in dates.

This time, the registrar's office was kind enough to provide me with the assistance of two office staff members who coordinated the move.  These assistant wardens first ensured that the hostel to which the students were moving was in a livable condition.  They got all the rooms thoroughly cleaned up and the electricity fitments inspected and repaired.  Many of the students were away on vacation, but had packed their items properly before leaving.  Under the supervision of the assistant wardens, the housekeeping staff properly labeled all the boxes and also packed the items which had been left unpacked by students.  We hired a truck, which transferred all the items in a couple of rides (and therefore, students did not have to wait for hours for the institute vehicle driver to return from his long lunch!)

The student representative was pro-active in coordinating the whole move along with the assistant wardens.  Incidentally, on the day of their move, I was traveling for a conference to a different city.  I only received two phone calls on that day - one to inform me that the move had begun and the other to inform me that it was over.  Both the AWs were highly appreciative of the student representative's presence of mind and involvement.

To conclude, I have learnt that the relation between faculty and students can immensely improve if students are kept informed about institute policies, treated like responsible adults and encouraged to take initiatives to solve their problems.  I have always admired students at N1 for staying happy in spite of the difficulties that they have seen here, but their involvement with the institute makes things even better.





[1] Last year, I heard, through "anonymous sources" in the hostel that many students were under the impression that I was against providing regular bus services to them between their hostel and academic buildings.  This is of course far from the truth.  I hope that this misinformation has been quelled due to the presence of our student representative in the transport committee.  After attending this meeting, she is aware of the limited vehicles at our disposal and how bus routing has to be optimized.


[2] These space constraints will vanish once our permanent hostel building will be ready in a few months.

Reproducing an edited version of an old post

I am visiting another N institute this week for a workshop.  It is simply amazing to be here.  The workshop has been beautifully organized and I am delighted to feel the positive vibes and enthusiasm of colleagues at this institute.  I am also very happy to meet many friends after more than a decade (and acquaintances who I knew only via email before).  I thought I would write a detailed post about it, but the workshop is very intense and we have been given "bed-time" reading.  So, I will simply post an edited version of something I had written about long ago, before Abi posted a link to this blog and made it familiar to Indian audience.

This post was about a particularly negative experience at N1 (which I removed once I recovered from that experience.)   There is no point in going into that story again, but here's the second half, about what I learnt.  Please note that this was written only a few months after starting my faculty position at N1, when I was learning to handle administrative tasks for the first time.  I was in tears that day, but I find it particularly funny as I read it now- so, thought I would share it :)  This part is being reproduced verbatim:

What I knew theoretically, but learnt practically from the ordeal:

1) Get ALL the facts absolutely correct before uttering them in a meeting.  There is no room for any mistake, even with respect to apparently irrelevant details.

2) If two super-important tasks are to be done at the same time, plan well and finish one before the other.  If this is not possible, speak frankly to your colleagues and ask for help.  It is better to express inability to do something than take it up and mess it up at a crucial time. 

3) Seniors all over the world get angry when mistakes are made by juniors.  In India, however, people express their anger/displeasure more openly.  In fact, this senior-junior thing is taken way more seriously in India than in the West. The sophisticated method of pointing out an errant colleague's mistake in person and behind closed doors is not always followed here.  Be prepared and don't take it personally.  The colleagues in front of whom you are taken to task have probably lived through it too.

4) When a colleague gets angry, keep quiet and wait for the tide to pass.  If you feel that he or she is making a mistake, wait for him or her to cool down before pointing this out. (I guess this is a common sense technique).

5) Resist the urge to pass on the baton and scream at innocent people later in the day.

Two in one

As I have mentioned before, compared to other departments at N1, my department is really short of faculty members.   In the last one year, we somehow managed a mostly one-to-one mapping between our courses and instructors per semester, with some of us teaching two courses [one course typically being a higher level course taught to students in upper years ].   However, in the new course structure, we will be teaching two extra courses per semester from next year.  We further wish to strengthen our Integrated Master's and PhD programme and add some more courses to it instead if asking these students to take courses with upper year undergraduates.

Combine this with the dwindling number of faculty members in our department and you have a situation in which we will all need to teach two courses per semester.
As I was describing this situation to a colleague from a very well-endowed department, he remarked, "two courses per semester? That's a fate I wouldn't wish for my enemies!"

I appreciate this colleague's concern for my department.  Most of my own departmental colleagues have also thought about it.  Given that most of us are very young and building up our research programmes, we would ideally like a teaching load of at most one course per semester, just like our friends in the other departments.  Nonetheless, we are mentally prepared for this scenario [0].

A colleague, who has been instrumental in designing our courses and has taught multiple courses per semester before, feels that it will not be as difficult as we have ourselves designed our course structure and content.  Contributing to a scheme which we feel strongly about will be challenging and will not feel like a burden.  I share my colleague's optimism, but am also aware of the challenges of multi-teaching.

In the previous semester, I taught two courses for the first time.   Both were taught to moderately sized groups.  I had very ambitious plans for both these courses.  I wanted to upload typed course notes for both of them because typing things out makes the structure and material very clear in my mind.  The plan was to prepare all lectures for course 1 in the coming week on Saturday, lectures for course 2 on Sunday and spend about one and a half hours each daily typing up the notes during the weekdays.  This, as I foresaw, would also give me ample time for research.

As it turned out, however, I found preparing the lectures much more challenging and time consuming than I had thought.  It would take me the entire weekend to prepare the lectures of one course (the course which I had thought would be easier to teach!)  I would prepare the lectures for course 2 during the weekdays and this also took a lot of time.  So, I toned down my ambitious plans and was able to put up typed notes only for one course till the middle of the semester.  After that, as the pace of the lectures increased, the time spent in preparing them increased even more and I had to give up typing notes for good.  I also found myself not able to give as much time to my PhD and Master's student as I would have liked.

Perhaps, teaching both these courses could have been less strenuous if I had taught at least one of them before.  With more experience, pursuing this kind of teaching load without impacting research work can also possibly become "second" nature.  But, as of now, it certainly is a challenge and entails very strict time management.

In the coming semester, I will be teaching two courses.  I have already taught one of them before and have the course notes ready [1].  So, this semester will be an opportunity to upgrade the material and the presentation [2].  The second course will be taken by a Master's student and Integrated PhD student doing projects with me and I have already planned for it according to their requirement.  As an additional advantage, this will add to the time I can devote to them.  If one has to teach two courses in one semester, this is the optimal course allotment one can hope for and we would want to ensure a similar arrangement for all department instructors as much as possible.

In my field, teaching two courses per semester is very common in similar Indian institutes as well as in North American universities.  Postdocs and PhD students might have it easier with just one course per semester, but permanent faculty, in a large number of research universities, have a 2:1 or 2:2 course load.  Faculty members at places with a 1:1 load consider themselves lucky to have a light load.

Here, however, almost all my colleagues have graduated from institutes where 1:0 load is more of a norm (if not 0:0!)  Most had not taught before joining N1.  So, a 2:2 or 2:1 load seems daunting because one is simply not habituated to it.

I look forward to hearing from readers about their current teaching loads, their thoughts about it and the load they would ideally like to have.


[0] I am writing this post under the assumption that there are two teaching semesters - autumn and spring.  The summer months are non-teaching months.  Some senior professors at the institute have floated the idea of offering "soft" courses in the summer semester, but at the moment, I don't want to go in there!


[1] I was supposed to teach a first year course before, but recent changes in the course structure and our departmental composition have necessitated  the outsourcing of this course to a colleague from another department.


[2] Teaching the same course over and over again can become boring and uninspiring.

Intelligent course designing

Recently, there has been much introspection at N1 about its undergraduate programme.  The first two batches of our undergraduate programme have done very well and most have got into prestigious PhD programmes all over the world.
While there is much appreciation of this fact, it is also felt that in the current course structure, the performance of students in the first two years has not been up to the mark.

Naturally, some are questioning whether our current process of admitting students, in the quest to fill up the number of seats specified by MHRD, is compromising on the quality of students.  This question assumes special importance in the current national debate concerning the IIT entrance exams.

The other question that people are asking is whether the current course structure of our undergraduate programme is the best structure to provide a strong foundation to our students in the sciences?  Is this system optimal from the point of view of the students? Has this system been fair to the students that we do get? Can we make our programme more accessible to our students without diluting our courses and without compromising on the objectives of our institute?

In the current system, students take a broad variety of courses in the sciences in the first two years  and choose a major subject in the third year (though they also continue to study interdisciplinary courses).  Thus, in the first two years, the students have to learn enough about different sciences to be able to develop a broad perspective in science and make an informed choice of their major.  The primary challenges in this system are

a) the jump from class twelfth to the first year of this programme.  Since each discipline is only represented by one course per semester for the first four semesters, a lot of material needs to be covered to prepare the students for the intensive courses that they take in the third year.  Many students are unable to handle the pressure at this early stage.  For example, students who opted for Biology in 11th and 12th now have a hard time keeping up with their peers in their first year Mathematics course (and vice versa).

b) Once a student decides to major in a subject A in the third year, she again has to make a big jump from what she studied in A in the first two years and the advanced material that she sees now in the third year.  Does one course of A each semester in the first four semesters adequately prepare the student to make an informed decision about choosing A as a major and then undertake five intensive courses of A each semester in the third year?  Keeping this in mind, when instructors try to ensure that students in the first two years have the necessary pre-requisites for year 3 by following a challenging course syllabus, many students experience burn-out.


There was some serious rethinking about these matters from the course-structure point of view rather than the quality-of-student point of view and various remedies were suggested.  Somewhere between the extreme of narrowing down a student to one subject in the first year itself and that of making all courses "gentle" was found the right balance.  Basically, the incline from one year to another has been made more gradual.

As per the new structure, which has now been approved by the senate,
a) Just as before, students will take one course per semester in each of the sciences in the first year.
b) In the second year, students will now choose three sciences of their interest and take three courses per semester in each of the chosen subjects.   These courses will be more rigorous than the first year courses.
c) In the third year, the student will choose a major from among the three subjects chosen in the second year.

The new structure has generated enthusiasm among many faculty members.  We feel that it gives us more space to introduce the most fundamental aspects of our fields in the first two years in a way that students have enough time to follow and digest what is being taught to them.  

Each department now has the fundamental task of redesigning the first year course and introducing appropriate new courses in the second year.  The next couple of weeks will be spent doing this as the new plan will be put into action in the coming semester.

I would like to hear from readers about the undergraduate course structures at their institutes in the initial years and their thoughts about it, either as a student or instructor (or both).

A very friendly blogger

This post is to congratulate Professor K VijayRaghavan (Director, NCBS) on being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (pointer from the recent blog posts of Professors Abi and Rahul).

A lot has been written about his scientific accomplishments and his role in building up NCBS.  He is also active on the blogging network.

As Rahul points out,

``he is one of those scientists always willing to speak his mind, without causing controversy, and participate civilly in online discussion: he has commented occasionally (including very recently) on this and other blogs and himself blogs at Indiabioscience."

I have benefited a lot from many of his comments on this blog and have also enjoyed his amusing take on various issues [recently, in response to my (somewhat angry) post about communication troubles between senior and younger professors at N1, he suggested that they could go out together for a beer session where each can speak their mind without offending the other!]

My initial interaction with him was very funny.  He visited this blog following a link from Abi's blog and left the following comment:

Hi New Prof in New India,
I really enjoyed this post. Its wonderful for those joining new places in particular but also for those looking for faculty positions anywhere to hear about your experiences. You write politely and well and I am sure no one will take offense if you identify the places you are writing about. N1 can only become better and even more responsive! I would love to recommend N1 to others and perhaps apply myself if only I knew where it is :-)). In any case congrats and thanks to Nanopolitan for pointing me here. Keep writing.
Best wishes
Vijay
K. VijayRaghavan, Bangalore


I am not a biologist.  Being new to the scientific community in India and somewhat misled by his comment and his simple blogger profile, I assumed that he is a postdoc entering the job market and wrote the following response:

Hi Vijay,
It is a good idea to apply widely to many institutes and not write off any new ones before visiting them.
The current generation of job-seekers in India is very lucky because of the wide variety of academic jobs available and we should take full advantage of that.


However, after reading a few more comments by him on other posts, it became very obvious that my assumption was false! So, I googled him and went ``Oops! A big oops!"

Since then, I am very careful about who I am writing to and also about offering unsolicited advice :)

I conclude this post with a very thoughtful comment by him on a post I wrote long ago about struggling between academic and administrative duties [bold emphasis added]:

``Research is a full-time job. Teaching is another full-time job. Administration need never be more than 20%-time job. Counseling students ditto. So, with time-management and prioritization the question is, how many jobs do we want to do: .2, .4, 1, 1.2, 1.4, 2, 2.2, 2.4 etc. The choice we make is substantially ours and also depends on the context.

Lets say you decide that you are passionate about research, committed to excellence in teaching and, at the same time, would like to help with committee work and student counseling. In other words you want to be a 2.4 job person. If each job takes 6 hours of work a day, we are talking about a 14 hour day and an amazing ability to partition one’s hard-drive. Not easy for the best of us. There are at least two ‘trivial’ solutions to the 14 h day problem. The first is to do all jobs badly in a 6 h day. The second is to drop research. The first trivial solution inevitably leads to the second as neglecting research is a downward spiral that makes your research eventually irrelevant. Its amazing though, that something that should take about 2.4 hours a day can lead to a crisis in one’s research and teaching. Why is this? In my view, still taking shape, the .4 job day that is taken up by counseling and committee work, particularly when done well, is an opiate that makes us feel useful. The rest of the 2 job day will be very well used even if we only used a third of that time thinking hard and working a bit (i.e. 4 hours a day). Thinking hard, consistently, is demanding on most of us ordinary folk. Rather than find ways to remedy this handicap, we do more of the opiate. Hence the downward spiral. Thus, most people don’t say no to committee work. We justify our involvement with a variety of real and virtual arguments, but we inevitably get drawn into it more than we need to, We next say that this is the cause of the demise of our research or teaching. While, it may be the other way around.
The new institutes, such as yours, have an opportunity to shake us oldies from this complacent luxury of buffaloes wallowing in our ponds and declaring that ours is the best way and but for admin work and bureaucracy we would in a better pond. The reason I say this is that there is a nontrivial, though unstable, solution to the 14 hour efficient work day. That is by keeping an institutional and individual focus on research and teaching as our primary goals with all other activities helping these. If we can manage this focus, the .4 job investment will make the 2 job goal attainable in less time. If we forget this mantra the .4 job becomes all encompassing."

Generation gap?

Like many other new institutes, the faculty at N1 almost entirely consists of young members within five to ten years of their PhD.  The associate professors (few) and full professors (fewer) can be counted on fingertips.  Our senior colleagues have substantially contributed to the growth of N1 and by their accomplishments and experience, have been able to give direction to the institute.  What I also admire about them is that they left good positions in established institutes and roughed it out in a new set up and at the same time, managed to keep their research programmes going.  Their commitment and leadership is deeply appreciated.

Sometimes, however, there is a bit of a gap in communication between the younger faculty (YF) and senior faculty (SF) members.  I would like to share an example of how something said by YF can be misinterpreted by SF and vice versa.

A lot of heated conversations are centered around the balance between teaching and research.  On joining, the message that most of us get is that while there should be no compromises in teaching undergraduate courses in our flagship programme, eventually our performance will be judged on the basis of our publications and research grants.  Those of us who did their PhD/postdocs in North American universities have had prior teaching experience and have also seen our supervisors/postdoc guides balancing and actively performing both duties.  On the other hand, many of my colleagues have joined after doing postdocs in research institutes in India and Europe.  Thus, they may not have had any teaching experience prior to joining here and have come out of a system where undergraduate education was not given much priority.

Faced with the challenges of teaching their first course and trying to carve out an independent identity in the research world simultaneously, some YFs are occasionally heard saying that their teaching duties take time away from their research work.  I would not doubt  the commitment of a colleague who says this towards teaching well.  I would only think that my colleague is dealing with time management issues, an important part of the learning curve of any faculty member and is frankly sharing his/her struggles with others.

Unfortunately, however, if our SFs hear this, more often than not, they will angrily retort and say that they had much heavier teaching loads when they started out and that YF has it much easier and therefore should not complain.  SF might even make a general statement on the lines of ``People should not make teaching an excuse for their lack of productivity."  Perhaps, SF is making a general statement, but YF will be stunned because s/he has been very productive.  Needless to say, this conversation may not end very well.

SF's reaction is based on the assumption that YF was making teaching load an excuse for weakness, where as all YF was doing was harmlessly interacting with colleagues and sharing his/her struggles.  On the other hand, even though SF made an off-hand general remark, it is next to impossible for YF to not take it personally!  Perhaps, it might have been better if SF too had shared some stories of their early career days or given some advice. While it is considered impolite to offer unsolicited advice, surely unsolicited advice is better than unsolicited criticism?

Teaching was only one example.  Similar conversations can also happen around other issues like research facilities, lab/office space, personal facilities like transport, housing etc.

On a personal note, I often don't mind when a senior says things like ``I had it much harder," provided the senior gives a concrete example and describes how s/he handled it.  I get this a lot from my father and it usually has the desired effect.
When I was describing the above situation to him the other day, his reply was:

`` In army, a junior will not dare to open his mouth when a senior is talking.  You academic people have it much easier."

I will leave it to the readers to agree or disagree with my father :)















  

Connected and unwell!

Oh well!

Perhaps, having internet at home is not such a good thing after all.

This year, I am one of the coordinators of the summer research programme at our institute.  We received a very large number of applications by email [1] and by spending an hour everyday, I was gradually processing them and forwarding them to the concerned faculty members [2].  With internet at home, however, I spent all of Sunday (morning till late night) working on this, forwarded about 500 remaining applications in one go and felt happy and relieved (and grateful to have internet at home).  Today morning, I woke up with a severe headache and could not hold myself together after teaching my morning class.  So, I had to take a day off.  Come evening and I am down with fever :-(

Oh well!!

   

[1] Yes, I am aware that a smarter method of processing applications for academic activities is by encouraging web based applications, which also sorts them out and prepares databases.  Our team of coordinators totally underestimated the number of applications that our summer programme will receive and have learnt this the hard way!


[2] This has been an interesting learning experience.  I now know the key research areas of many of my colleagues.  I also know that those colleagues who have words like cancer, nano, cosmology, neuro  or anything "quantum" on their research profiles are likely to receive the maximum number of applications from students with very ambitious research programmes.  For example, one student, who applied to work with a faculty member specializing in neural science,  wants to explore how to make dead men speak!  

Connected and safe!

I have not been able to blog in the last few days.  This is not because of lack of time or lack of issues to blog about [1].  Mainly, it is because by the time I am done with my academic and administrative work nowadays, it is very late.  A few days ago, I had a scary experience while returning home at night - I encountered two snakes and a (possibly) drunk biker who kept tailgating me.  Since then, I have been very particular about returning home on time.

Given the very remote location of my house, internet at home was out of the question before!  However, thanks to the efforts and initiative of some of my colleagues who take care of the networking needs of the institute, those of us who live on campus now have access to the institute network at home.

Apart from the many benefits of having internet at home, I can now blog more frequently, in the safe environs of home.  I hope I can be more blog-productive now.



[1] For readers at N1,  ;-) 

Solicited advice

A former summer student has written to me seeking advice with respect to the situation described below.  Since many readers of this blog are engineers pursuing research, I would truly appreciate some feedback on this matter:

I was recently offered an internship in Country X. It is sponsored by the Indian Government and only very few students have been selected from all over the country. I am in a great predicament. I realise that this a wonderful opportunity but feel that the quality of research is much better in India. I have decided to do an MS after my B.Tech. So I want to do a good internship which can help in getting an admit to a good university [1].

I am speaking to people and trying to get their opinion on the same. I am confident of getting a good internship in India (results aren't yet out). I am unaware of how much foreign exposure will matter in getting admission to a good MS programme. The university where I have been offered the internship isn't very well known. I have always wanted to do an internship in the area in which I am planning to pursue my higher studies. I am definitely not going to take up the topic in which I have been offered this internship for my higher studies. I mainly want to know the criteria on which I should be selecting an internship and things that will matter in getting an admission offer from a university.






[1]: She is probably referring to universities in USA.

Feeling the pulse - II

In a previous post, I started writing about my attempts to "feel the pulse" of N1.  In the last couple of months, N1 seems to be making the transition from a small school where everyone knows each other and a lot of things work informally to one where a system is evolving for all academic activities and administrative procedures.

In my previous post, I had expressed some concern that as the system becomes more formal, our senior administrative functionaries (both academic and non-academic) may not be as approachable anymore.  I now realize that my fear was unfounded.  Once a proper system is in place, the approachability of the seniors does not diminish- what diminishes is the need to approach the senior administration for every small thing.

Let me give you a very amusing example.  A few days after I joined N1, our department invited a senior professor for delivering a seminar talk.  The professor requested for transport arrangements between his residence and N1.  When I requested our transport in charge for arranging a vehicle, he told me that in principle, the honorarium to our speakers includes their transportation expenses.  If I want transport arranged for any speaker from the institute's side, I should take permission from the director.  I was very surprised and it took me a lot of courage to write to the director for such a trivial matter.  The director sent a one word email saying "approved", but I realized later that the transport IC could have definitely arranged this (without my writing to the head of the institute).  But, unlike his predecessors at this job, he was unwilling to take any action on his own in the absence of any written framework.  So, he cleverly deflected the job to another new and clueless person (me) who also did not know what was the right thing to do.

Soon after this, a form and instructions for requesting transport were uploaded on our intranet page.  If we need vehicles for any speaker/visitor, we simply fill up this form and submit it to the transport section, which then takes care of getting the necessary approvals etc.

Evolution of a proper system does not necessarily mean longer procedures and more hierarchy.  It simply means that every individual in the system is aware of his or her role in getting any job done, clearly understands how the job is to be done and that everything does not land up on the table of the director!! A proper system means that if you submit a requisition for something, the office assistant knows precisely what to do with it (or can readily refer to a handbook if unaware of the procedure) and will not toss back the requisition saying "I cannot do anything unless you get it approved from the authorities."
Such a system balances the job allocation among all members of the institute and also makes everyone accountable.

However, it also means that some requests cannot be entertained overnight.  Every so often, there is a clash between those who want something immediately and those who have to ensure that the request/suggestion is forwarded through the right channels.  Very frequently, there are also differences of opinions between those who like to have every little thing put down on paper and those who would instead like to move forward with the essentials.  This occasionally leads to frayed tempers during committee meetings or even informal discussions between people.

But, it is great if people debate and discuss these issues with an open mind and not overkill the issue by making it a "bureaucracy versus academic freedom" fight.